“I have to be there for her.
After all, she is still my mother.”
All the work that goes toward healing the wounds of growing up without adequate mothering brings daughters immense benefits: less negativity, guilt, and fear. A quieting of the compulsion to be a people pleaser. A life piloted by their own desires instead of anyone else’s. A circle of family and friends who genuinely love and respect them. A blossoming sense of confidence and courage. It takes daily effort to keep old patterns from reasserting themselves. But once that work becomes a new way of navigating life, it is impossible to imagine going back to the painful constraints of the way they lived before.
One particular set of circumstances, though, can easily throw anyone off balance: dealing with a mother who is suddenly ill, infirm, or alone. A serious crisis can reopen old wounds, unravel a daughter’s careful, self-protective decisions about the relationship, and reactivate not just old, unhealthy patterns of behavior but also the longings that so often underlie them.
But because life isn’t static, and challenges arise, I want you to read this short chapter, think about it, and keep it in reserve—you may well need it at some point. It will help you keep your life on course, and protect your own well-being if it is challenged in ways that become unhealthy.
Deborah: “Mom’s Got Cancer”
It’s difficult for any adult daughter to define her responsibilities to a mother who’s facing the challenges of aging, or whose life has suddenly been turned upside down. But for a daughter who has carefully taken steps to change her relationship with an unloving mother, and perhaps even to cut off contact with her, it’s excruciating. When an unloving mother suddenly has a broken hip or a life-threatening illness, or calls tearfully to say, “Your father is dying,” what happens to the careful boundaries you’ve put in place to protect yourself?
It’s easy to regress. All the guilt about setting limits, and all the lingering desire for love and approval, come to the surface as a daughter faces a mother in need. A daughter may have done significant work to repair her life and to become more confident and independent. But even when she is feeling relatively strong as a separate person, the reappearance of her mother, this time in troubled circumstances, can reactivate old patterns. Every daughter hopes that a crisis will turn into a blessing—that a brush with mortality or an immersion in grief will become a catalyst that dissolves the worst of her mother’s unloving behavior and brings her closer. It can happen. But because that outcome is far from certain, I always advise clients in this situation to temper their hope with caution, but also leave open the possibility that this may be a time when they can forge a new connection with their mothers.
Deborah, who had been physically and verbally abused by her mother as a child, had come for treatment when she feared that her anger at one of her children had come close to spilling into dangerous territory. We worked hard to deactivate the shame, grief, anger, and destructive programming from her childhood, and in our time together, she had decided that she could only have a superficial relationship with her mother. “I don’t want to completely deprive the kids of their grandma—they only see the good side of her that I never had. So we have her over for dinner occasionally, and the conversation is all about the kids. That’s it. She and I don’t really talk much,” Deborah told me in an e-mail six months after we’d ended our work together. “I’m so much happier now. I can’t undo the past, but the present is okay.”
But a couple of years later, she got news from her mother that changed everything. “Can you squeeze me in today?” Deborah asked when she called me. “I have to see you.” She stopped by my office on the way home from work.
DEBORAH: “I got this call from my mother last night. She just found out she’s got breast cancer. It looks like stage II, I’m not sure—they’re talking about lymph nodes and chemotherapy and . . . Oh my God, Susan. I was on the Internet all night reading and trying to see what the options are and what we need to do. My brain just won’t shut off, but I’m so scared for her I can’t think straight. I have this terrible feeling that they’re going to find more . . . that she’s going to die.”
“I’m terribly sorry, Deborah,” I told her. “That’s of course a very real possibility, and you need to be prepared for that. But let’s slow down and take things one step at a time. Making a list of your questions and talking to your mother’s doctors so you’re operating on solid information is one good step. Taking advantage of the counseling and support the hospital offers is another.
“Knowing you, I know that your first impulse is to drop everything and be there twenty-four/seven for your mother. But you’ve got a husband, three young kids, and a thriving business, and you can’t turn your back on any one of those things. So let’s work together here to figure out how much you can realistically give your mother without wiping yourself out.”
No matter how badly she was mistreated, it’s difficult for a daughter to do anything other than be pulled back into her mother’s world when her mother is suffering. In the first days and weeks of an unfolding crisis, she may well be immersed in questions, arrangements, and intense emotions—hers, her mother’s, her family’s. She may be reeling; that’s to be expected. And with her mother’s needs looming large, she probably will have a hard time concentrating on her everyday life.
But from the very beginning, it’s vital for a daughter to put her own needs on the endless to-do list. Who might help her with tasks? Who can share the responsibility for helping meet her mother’s new needs? Whom can she turn to for emotional support? No matter how much a daughter believes that she is the only person who can deal effectively with the problem and no matter how much she’s encouraged to believe that, there is always help available. She has to make a priority of finding it.
That is easier said than done, and it’s not uncommon for women to crash first before realizing they have other options. For Deborah, the days after her mother’s diagnosis were a blur of activity, and it was much easier for her to run herself ragged than to rest and seek support. She was exhausted when she came in a month into her mother’s treatment.
DEBORAH: “Mom’s doing all right, and I have to be thankful for that. They think they got all the cancer with the surgery, but now she has to go through a lot of chemo, and it’s grueling. It’s torture for her, Susan. So I can’t really complain about taking care of her.”
I asked her to tell me about what she’d been doing, and she seemed to trip into high gear.
DEBORAH: “Well, I’ve added a few more things to my day, you could say. I get the kids off to school, and on my way in to work I check in on Mom, see if she needs anything, if she’s eating. Then I try to get some work done between calls to doctors and research I’ve been doing on clinical trials, and if she needs a ride to the hospital I take her and bring her back. I pick up the kids, make dinner, make food for Mom, run by to check in on her, try to get back to my computer to post updates for relatives. . . . And then I see if I can make a dent in the work I didn’t get done during the day. I haven’t figured out how sleep fits into that. Or my own lunch, some days.”
That had to be taking a heavy toll on her, I said. “It’s making me exhausted just listening to you.”
DEBORAH: “I can’t complain. I’m glad I can be there for her. She lights up when she sees me, and I know my presence is making this whole awful process a little easier. She’s told me that, Susan. She said she doesn’t want a stranger in the house looking after her—she wants me. And for the first time I can ever remember, she said she loved me.” (Deborah’s eyes welled up with tears.) “I’ve been waiting for that my whole life.”
SUSAN: “I know you have. It’s good for you to take it in as deeply as you can. If your mother is offering warmth or closeness or gratitude now, embrace it, and take it a day at a time.”
DEBORAH: “That’s what I’m trying to do. I know it might not last, but right now I feel like I have the mother I always wanted.”
For some daughters a long-yearned-for change in their mothers is an answered prayer, and it often takes great effort for them to remember that the lives they’ve built for themselves still need attention, too.
“How are you holding up?” I asked. “Tell me what’s happening with your family and your business.”
DEBORAH: “That part’s not so great. I think I’m close to losing a client I thought I could count on for next year because we’ve been late delivering proposals to them. The kids are getting a little whiny about not seeing me. Jerry is trying to be supportive, but he’s really resentful. He says things like, ‘Your mother never did anything but hurt you, and now all of a sudden she’s being nice because she’s sick. Why do you have to be the one to rush in and take care of her every need?’ He thinks my sister should fly in and help, and Mom should hire someone to help her at home.
“I know I’m getting worn down. I was knocked out with a bad cold last week, and I can see that I can’t keep this up. I guess I’m not Superwoman after all. . . . But she’s my mother, and this could be my last chance to have her.”
Of course Deborah wasn’t the only one who could give her mother what she needed. As I told her, “You’re allowed to have a life, and you may need to tell your mother you’ll engage a caregiver or that you’ll spend a reasonable amount of time with her but not bear the entire responsibility for her care. You can’t go on like this.”
DEBORAH: “I feel so overwhelmed, Susan. I hardly know how to start thinking about this. I don’t want to lose her.”
“And you don’t want to lose yourself, either,” I said. “Probably the most important thing you can do,” I told Deborah, “is to be proactive in finding support for yourself. This is one of the toughest challenges you will ever face. On one side you have your mother, who’s very ill. And on the other you have your own business and family. You can’t be the full-time caregiver for anyone and still have the energy and vitality you need to keep going. If you go down the tubes, how does that help your mother?
“Let’s figure out together how you can lighten the load for yourself,” I told her. “You can cut back and enlist help from other resources. You can hire help, or if money is an issue you can organize your mother’s friends to help, and people from her temple. Your time will be so much better spent finding support rather than running around.”
We made a list of questions for her to answer. What kind of resources did her mother have? Who could take her mother to at least some of her chemotherapy and doctors’ appointments? Who could help with food and care at home? I gave her the assignment of researching some options on the Internet and checking with the support groups at her mother’s hospital. Doing this turns on the rational part of your brain, I told her, and writing out “What do I need/what does she need/who can help” lists, then researching, is a useful process for turning whirling anxiety into the beginnings of solutions.
DEBORAH: “Jerry’s been telling me the same thing, and I know he’ll help me with this. I was so afraid that she’d get upset if I cut back any time with her.”
Deborah ultimately found a meal service that specialized in delivering meals and snacks to cancer patients for a reasonable price, as well as a volunteer service that could take her mother to some of her chemotherapy sessions. Her mother had savings that could go toward the meal service, and when she was able to eat regular meals, Meals On Wheels was an option. Deborah also began talking to students from the community college who might do some driving and errands for her mother until she felt stronger.
There’s no easy and permanent solution to a crisis like the one Deborah faced, but once she admitted that she couldn’t—and didn’t want to—bear the burden of her mother’s care alone, she gained breathing room. And perspective.
DEBORAH: “I think the hardest part for me is realizing that I can’t fix everything. I can’t make her better, I can’t do everything she needs, and I can’t make her happy all the time. She hasn’t been so happy with having more people involved, and those smiles and ‘I love yous’ aren’t there so often. She’s going through hell, and her moods are up and down. Last time I went by to see her she said, ‘I had such a terrible night. You should’ve come. I hate having strangers here.’ All I could say was, ‘I know, Mom. I’m doing everything I can.’ Sometimes I feel so guilty that I can’t be everything to everybody. But I can only do what I can do.”
“That’s right,” I told her. “And taking care of yourself isn’t turning your back on your mother.”
How Much Is Enough?
How does any daughter determine just where her responsibilities to her mother begin and end? It’s a loaded topic, and in a crisis, you may well be surrounded by friends and family members who are certain they know what’s right for you and your mother. But you are the only one who knows what you can handle, and what you need to do to preserve your own health and sanity. Your mother’s illness or widowhood isn’t an excuse for her to behave badly. It doesn’t obligate you to tolerate having your life turned upside down, despite great pressure on you simply to go along with her requests and demands. Here, too, you’ll need to stand up for yourself, difficult as that can be.
I don’t suggest that you turn your back on an ill or suddenly needy mother, but in helping her, you’ll have to decide what you can handle and then stand firm.
If she’s ill, it may be that what you can do is talk to her doctors and help make decisions about her treatment, but not be involved in her day-to-day care at all.
You may realize that you have the time and willingness to spend a great deal of time with your mother for a month after she’s widowed, then help her find other sources of solace and companionship.
Even in such extremely stressful situations, you must do what’s healthy for you. As you did when you renegotiated your relationship with your mother the first time, you have to attend to your own needs and boundaries. Then, if you choose, you can offer your mother the best care and attention you can reasonably give.
Hold On to Your New Empowerment
It is possible to withstand the sometimes intense pressure to put someone else’s concept of duty or their definition of your role as a daughter ahead of what you know is best for yourself. If you’re faced with a mother in crisis and have trouble putting yourself in the picture according to expectations set by others, fall back on your assertiveness, your nondefensive communication, your boundary-setting. They’ll give you the time and space to look out for your own interests and act on your inner wisdom.
And if you still feel torn or guilty, remember how much of your life you spent as the one for whom promises were rarely kept, the one whose needs rarely mattered. The neglected side of yourself is still there inside you, healing now because at last it sees you honoring it and all you can be. Remember that when you think your needs count for less than someone else’s. Your well-being depends on it.